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It's pretty interesting that most countries in Europe are unitary states while most countries in the Americas are federal states. Maybe due to the centuries of

It's pretty interesting that most countries in Europe are unitary states while most countries in the Americas are federal states. Maybe due to the centuries of warfare in Europe the states that survived were unitary states that could better handle external threats. Or maybe it's a holdover from a tradition of monarchy that the Americas never had. Interestingly, Germany is also a federal state. Yet we never seem to hear about federal regions of Germany disagreeing with each other and fighting with the Federal government like we hear about the US. Any Germans want to spill the tea on German inter-regional political drama?

runawaybottle 6y ago
It can be argued that this it is part of the American political character because our origin story was shaped by the combination of disparate states, as in, we could have easily had colonies that sided with the British. It got cemented due to Slavery as we basically carved up the country between slaves states and free states, and ultimately fought a civil war to deal with this bifurcation. It’s been our long history, it defined us. Edit: Whoops, I did the American thing again and forgot there are other countries in the Americas.
detaro 6y ago
> Yet we never seem to hear... For reference, do you hear about any internal German politics?
- detaro 6y ago
  To expand on it: I can't really compare the magnitude, because I don't have a good sense for how much of an issue it is in the US, but yes, states do sometimes disagree with each other, have differing interests depending on local factors, want funding allocated to their projects, and they do occasionally squabble with the federal government over authority (especially when they want federal funding for things that are their area of responsibility). They also have quite an effect on how politics inside and between the political parties work (which I feel like in other countries the largest cities do instead?)
yellowapple 6y ago
> most countries in the Americas are federal states This ain't true¹. Most of the landmass of the Americas is covered by federated states, sure, but the vast majority of states are unitary. The more relevant factor is the size of the state's territory. With a few exceptions (like China), most big countries are federated, and most small countries are unitary. ---- ¹: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Map_of_unitary_and_federal_states.svg/1920px-Map_of_unitary_and_federal_states.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Ma...
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  Good point, I was using that map when I made my observation and overlooked the cluster of smaller countries in the Andes. My bad. After doing some back of the envelope calculations, about 17% of the countries in the Americas are federated and 16% in Europe, so it's actually pretty similar. But countries in the Americas have a much bigger size disparity than in Europe which really makes the federated areas stand out.
frank2 6y ago
I always thought that the post-WWII German government is federal because it was designed mainly by the US government, which is federal.
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  Well, Germany when it first emerged as a nation state as Imperial Germany in 1871 did so as a federal state. Quite different from the UK or France. Even Italy, which emerged as a nation state in 1861, did so as a unitary kingdom. Germany's federal form of government seems to go against the trend in Europe.
pjc50 6y ago
A hint as to the US federal infighting is that very few other countries have statues to the side that lost the civil war. Or other similarly traumatic wars; the Communist countries have demolished their statues of Lenin or herded them into museums, even Spain has removed its last statue of the dictator Franco. (Not to say that you can't see the faultlines in other European societies though. Ireland's parties inherit from her civil war. The UK has not entirely given up on anti-Catholicism, and has forgotten that its own most recent civil war only ended in 1998. I would put money on East vs West still being somewhat live in German politics, but conducted with a good deal more dignity)

runawaybottle 6y ago

It can be argued that this it is part of the American political character because our origin story was shaped by the combination of disparate states, as in, we could have easily had colonies that sided with the British. It got cemented due to Slavery as we basically carved up the country between slaves states and free states, and ultimately fought a civil war to deal with this bifurcation. It’s been our long history, it defined us. Edit: Whoops, I did the American thing again and forgot there are other countries in the Americas.

detaro 6y ago

> Yet we never seem to hear... For reference, do you hear about any internal German politics?

detaro 6y ago
To expand on it: I can't really compare the magnitude, because I don't have a good sense for how much of an issue it is in the US, but yes, states do sometimes disagree with each other, have differing interests depending on local factors, want funding allocated to their projects, and they do occasionally squabble with the federal government over authority (especially when they want federal funding for things that are their area of responsibility). They also have quite an effect on how politics inside and between the political parties work (which I feel like in other countries the largest cities do instead?)

yellowapple 6y ago

> most countries in the Americas are federal states This ain't true¹. Most of the landmass of the Americas is covered by federated states, sure, but the vast majority of states are unitary. The more relevant factor is the size of the state's territory. With a few exceptions (like China), most big countries are federated, and most small countries are unitary. ---- ¹: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Map_of_unitary_and_federal_states.svg/1920px-Map_of_unitary_and_federal_states.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Ma...

magicsmoke 6y ago
Good point, I was using that map when I made my observation and overlooked the cluster of smaller countries in the Andes. My bad. After doing some back of the envelope calculations, about 17% of the countries in the Americas are federated and 16% in Europe, so it's actually pretty similar. But countries in the Americas have a much bigger size disparity than in Europe which really makes the federated areas stand out.

frank2 6y ago

I always thought that the post-WWII German government is federal because it was designed mainly by the US government, which is federal.

magicsmoke 6y ago
Well, Germany when it first emerged as a nation state as Imperial Germany in 1871 did so as a federal state. Quite different from the UK or France. Even Italy, which emerged as a nation state in 1861, did so as a unitary kingdom. Germany's federal form of government seems to go against the trend in Europe.

pjc50 6y ago

A hint as to the US federal infighting is that very few other countries have statues to the side that lost the civil war. Or other similarly traumatic wars; the Communist countries have demolished their statues of Lenin or herded them into museums, even Spain has removed its last statue of the dictator Franco. (Not to say that you can't see the faultlines in other European societies though. Ireland's parties inherit from her civil war. The UK has not entirely given up on anti-Catholicism, and has forgotten that its own most recent civil war only ended in 1998. I would put money on East vs West still being somewhat live in German politics, but conducted with a good deal more dignity)